The Red Queen
by lionesseyes13
Summary: In her own words, the story of Minerva McGonagall's life from childhood trevails through the end of two wars against Voldemort.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing. I'm just playing in J.K. Rowling's sandbox.

Reviews: Feedback is the only salary I get for writing fanfiction, so please be generous. At the outset of a longer story like this one, reviews are especially useful in helping me gauge what an audience enjoys and whether people would be interested in reading more of the work.

Author's Note: Some of Minerva McGonagall's backstory came from Pottermore, so if you don't want to be spoiled, just regard it all as fanfiction, and I won't be telling you which parts I made up and which parts J.K. Rowling did…

Prologue: Age of Heroes

Dear Catriona,

What is faith? It is a question I, as a minister's daughter, have asked myself many times over the years, dear niece, and I am no closer finding the complete answer today than I was when my hair was black like a raven's wing, not the pale silver of moonlight it is today.

I write this for you because I am dying, and I want someone to be able to learn from my story. You are skilled with words, and perhaps you will, if you feel there is gold to be made in telling the life story of another Hogwarts headmistress, convert my memories into a biography that contains more truth than Rita Skeeter's books about Dumbledore and Dippet combined. (Of course, it would not be difficult to write a more truthful biography than Skeeter's account of Dumbledore's life, because, from all I ever learned about Dumbledore—and I learned far more about Dumbeldore than many people—I can safely say that I agree with Elphias Doge's assertion that Skeeter's biography contained less truth than a Chocolate Frog Card.)

I do not complain about dying, for there have been, I confess, many times over the long years of my life when I wished I were dead, or, better yet, had never been born. Even now, my heart looks at trees, whose lives consist of no more than dreams of sun and memories of rain, and I envy them. There are times when I wish I were one of the rocks that line Scotland's rugged hills, ignored and forgotten by those who tread upon them.

You will protest, I am sure. How could I, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, commit the sacrilege of wanting myself dead? How could I, a respected teacher famous for fighting in two wars against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, wish to trade in my glorious memories for the sleep of the deaf and dumb rocks of the earth?

That is the tricky thing about memories, Catriona. They are like the wind. They come when they will, carrying both the hope of life and the danger of death. We cannot master them. They are our masters. They rejoice in their capriciousness, as they drag our hearts wherever they desire.

Now, the memories have taken me to this moment, where I sit writing this story. There is much I do not want to recall, but the memories scream to be recorded so that they can live in the minds and hearts of others when I am gone, I pray, to heaven like dust in the wind.

I shall start at the beginning, during a worldwide depression when one world was dying and another was about to be born. There is much glory in my tale, much wonder, and a great deal of sorrow. The bearer of my tale must shoulder a weighty burden before man, and, of all those who dwell on this earth, I trust none more than you. I have loved you as much as I could have loved any daughter of my flesh. I look upon your smiling face and see all that I have gained and lost as the price of my destiny—a fate that was written in ink in God's book before I was born.

Even as a child, I had to become used to the cruel whispers of gossipmongers, who thought that my mother was a freak and insane, though they never would have dared to say as much to my father directly, and were always hunting for abnormalities in my brothers and me. It was I who devised cover stories for any accidental displays of magic that my younger brothers, one of them your father, made. In the end, that turned out to be useful preparation for my later life, because more than most women, I have been subjected to the hidden daggers of jealousy and rumor. Perhaps that is to be expected. A price I had to pay to be a close friend and ally of one of the most revered and reviled men the world has ever known.

Tell them, Catriona, that I loved Albus Dumbledore, may God's blessings and peace be upon his soul, and that he loved me, for all I proved unworthy of his affection, though not in the same way and to the same degree that I loved my husband, Elphinstone Urquart. Of all the twists and turns that make up the geography of my life, there are none that I treasure more than the ones I navigated with Elphinstone. Indeed, there were many times, especially during the second war against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, when I wished that I had died with him in our garden that day, and that I could have left this valley of tears for others to conquer, but that was not my destiny.

My fate was to be a mother of generations of children passing through a House, even though my womb never bore a child of its own. A House motivated to change the world and destroy inequity, even as it was forever tempted to succumb to it. A House with a soul, like mine, filled with passion and violence. A House that, like my life, stands for victory and justice, yet, like me, can never hide its own frailties and cruelties against a terrible judgment. For decades, I was the harbinger of its joy and anger, the queen of its love and jealousy, and the bearer of its knowledge as well as its ultimate fool. My story, then, isn't just mine—it is a whole House's.

It is a story of love and loss, brotherhood and betrayal, courage and sacrifice, and the death of dreams. It is a story of the blurred line between our best and our worst. A strange thing about stories: though this all happened a long time ago, it is also happening right now, as you read these words. By the end of it, you might conclude that heroes never existed, and that, even if they did, they could never be trusted,since even the noblest of people could suddenly just…snap. On the other hand, you might argue, as I would, that though I lived during the end of the age of heroes, time saved its best heroes—people like Potter and Dumbeldore—for last. You might even believe that heroes can really exist and aren't just created through the careful fact manipulation of the _Daily Prophet_. Maybe that belief in heroes is all that faith is. 


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: My sincere appreciation to all my reviewers. Everyone's feedback means a lot to me and influenced this chapter. I hope that everybody will enjoy this next installment. Everything in this fic will be as historically accurate as I can make it, so if you notice a problem, please, let me know.

The Fall

As hard as it may be for my former students, even you, to believe, I wasn't born scowling or spouting out rules like an angry teapot. According to my mother—and I trust her word because, if I had been blessed with children, I would have remembered everything pleasant and painful about their birth—I was born laughing.

When I was born, I must have decided that the world needed more music, for I made my father's bagpipes burst into song, a sound which reportedly moved me to giggles. Naturally, I have no memory of any of this, although I have always loved the tunes that only bagpipes can play. As the air sweeps in and out of them, it is like hearing the wind whistling across the highlands, making me feel simultaneously as warm as if I were curled in an armchair about a family hearth, and as cold as if I were forever trapped miles away from my home. No other instrument can sound as lovely and as lonely as a bagpipe.

Including the bagpipes incident of my birth, I can only remember one case of my childhood magic. Although I do have a few vague recollections of controlling our family cat, an old tabby named Carmel, as a child, I thought there was nothing unusual about those things I did which I didn't even think of as magic, so I didn't devote any part of my mind to remembering them. It was only when I realized that there was something peculiar about me that I started trying to remember my magic, just like Adam and Eve saw that they were naked in Eden after they ate the apple, and suddenly thought there was something wrong with it, even though they had been naked from the moment of their creation.

It was in my family garden that, like Adam and Eve, I recognized that I was, in the eyes of the world, naked, and there was something wrong with it. Horrible, life-changing events, like the death of my dear husband, always happen in gardens, which is why I have never liked or trusted them despite their beauty.

It was a brisk autumn day—the first day of September, in fact—and the wind blew across the highlands, knocking colorful leaves off trees and beating roses into my almost-four-year-old cheeks. The sun, darting out from behind the white foam of the clouds in the placid cerulean ocean of the sky, warmed the back of my neck as I knelt on the cobblestone path dividing the family garden in half. I was taking a tremendous amount of care not to dirty or rip my tartan skirt.

Not only did I hate uncleanliness and disarray even at that early age, but I also was well aware that Mam would scold me if I ruined my clothing. She would say that Da earned enough money to clothe us once, not twice, and she was quite right. Precious few people could afford to indulge in excessive amounts of clothing in the 1930's and 1940's, and my father was not among them.

I was playing a game with a group of pebbles, but that wasn't unusual. When I was growing up, the favorite toys of all the girls I knew invariably consisted of pebbles or dolls woven from strands of grass. I'm not sure if we were simpler-minded to be entertained by such things, or just sensed that, if we acted bored, we would be assigned more chores.

At any rate, that day in the garden, I was imagining, as I always did, that my pebbles were a family with a mother, father, son, and daughter. Upon my command, the pebbles engaged in all sorts of family activities: chores, preparing and eating meals, listening to the radio, and going to church.

From the other side of the garden wall, I could hear Mrs. Boyd's shrieking soprano drowning out the voices of the other members of the choir as she led them in a psalm during choir practice at the First Presbyterian Church. First Presbyterian Church, with its white steeple stretching toward the heavens, happened to be the only church of any denomination in Caithness, a small and rural town with a population that expressed as little tolerance for outsiders as they did for one another. That meant all the women like Mrs. Boyd who apparently were convinced that God was hard of hearing had no choice but to flock like flies to a carcass to Da's church, where they volunteered for the choir with far more enthusiasm than skill. Imagining how much Da's eardrums would throb after attending the choir practice led by Mrs. Boyd, I grimaced and wished there was more musical talent in Caithness to allow for a more selective choir.

I was so fixated on Mrs. Boyd's shrill rendition of Psalm 91 that I started when I heard a hiss from the oak across the yard. Carmel, who had climbed halfway up the tree, had been precariously perched upon a large, leafless limb, waiting for a bird to fly by so she could catch it. A crow had finally obliged her by soaring past her, doubtlessly to pick up a worm.

As the bird flew by, Carmel hissed and rapidly extended her two front paws, but, instead of closing on black wings, they wrapped around empty air. In her advanced age, Carmel's reflexes were not as quick as they had once been, and the abrupt movement caused her to overbalance. Before she could compensate, she had toppled from her precarious perch.

My mouth falling open in horror—because I didn't want to see my cat break her neck or her head before my eyes—I imagined her flying through the air and landing safely in my lap. The thought, impossible because the wind was whipping in the opposite direction and I had no chance of reaching the tree in time to catch her when I was immobile with shock, had barely occurred to me when Carmel, plummeting to the ground, abruptly changed her trajectory.

Before I knew what was happening, she landed in my skirt. Seeming more furious and confused than injured by the fall, she lashed out at me, her claws tearing into my knees and the stunned hands I had reached out to remove her from my lap. Bewildered and bleeding, I cried out, but not loudly enough to be heard over Mrs. Boyd's singing, so I didn't expect my mother to come running.

"Don't cry, Minerva," Mam soothed, racing out of the kitchen door, which I supposed meant that she had witnessed the entire scene from the window over the sink, where she must have been washing dishes. Arriving beside me, she managed to evade Carmel's flailing claws long enough to scoop up the cat and dump the animal unceremoniously upon the ground. Then, taking care not to touch any of my cuts, she grabbed my hand and lifted me to my feet. "Let's get you inside and cleaned up."

Biting my lip to hold back more sobs and blinking as much of the dampness as I could out of my eyes, I followed her back into the kitchen, my wounded knees protesting with every step.

"I saw what happened," Mam told me, picking me up and placing me upon the counter next to the basket where my newborn brother—your father, Malcom—was napping. Her words confirmed my suspicion that she had been watching everything from the window above the sink. As she filled a bowl with soap and warm water from the sink, she continued, "You can't do things like that."

"I didn't mean to do anything, Mam," I protested, and then gasped when she brushed a towel soaked with soap and water across one of the scrapes on my knee. Her ministrations stung me as much as her unjust accusation.

"I know." Her lips thinned. "But you can't go defying the laws of physics like that in public. You have to control your magic."

"Magic?" I stuttered, wondering if I had missed a joke. "You can't be serious, Mam."

"I've never been more serious in my life, Minerva." Mam sighed. "Surely, you noticed that you can control our cat with your mind, and your friends can't do things like that with their family pets or farm animals."

"I have, Mam." I frowned, feeling my forehead knot. "Didn't think it mattered. Thought it was d—diff—er-ent—" I stumbled over the word's many syllables and then experienced a surge of pride in what I deemed as my impressive mastery of the English language when I choked out the whole word—"abilities. I can tell cats what to do the way Eleanor McFarland can run faster than anyone, Darla McPherson can stir food better than anybody, and Priscilla Boyd can sew straighter and prettier stitches than everybody else."

"Your different ability isn't like everybody else's." Mam spun her head around, as if to check that my almost-two-year-old brother, Robert, was still squealing as he rolled a ball around the parlor floor. Even though Robert, intent on his game, wouldn't have stopped playing if anything less exciting than Armageddon unfolded in the kitchen, she whispered, "You're a witch."

"Not a witch." Never enamored of the stories told about the fay folk and goblins who allegedly dwelled in the rugged hills of Caithness and convinced that I would have as little patience for tales about witches, I shook my head with enough fervor that my two dark plaits hit my cheeks. "Can't be. Witches don't exist, Mam."

"Oh, they exist, lass." Mam's green eyes locked upon mine. "You are one, and you're talking to one just now, in fact."

"You can't be a witch, Mam," I shouted, kicking my heels against the counter as she started to clean the cuts on my hands, because nobody wanted a mother who would even pretend to be a witch. "You aren't ugly or evil enough."

"Not all witches have warts on their noses and cackle as they stir up deadly brews in black cauldrons, lass." Wearing a slight smile that only infuriated me more, she went on, "Some witches are beautiful, and others are as good as gold. There are even some witches that are both good and beautiful."

"Does Da know that you think you're a witch?" I demanded, my chin jutting out defiantly.

"He knows I _am_ a witch." Again, Mam sighed, and the glow in her emerald eyes dimmed. "Minerva, I hoped that I wouldn't have to explain all this to you until you were older, but, from the day you were born, you were magical. You were playing your da's bagpipes, Summoning toys off top nursery shelf to your craddle, and ordering Carmel around with your mind. At first, I tried to lock you away in the cellar or the attic with me when you started showing those telltale signs of being a witch. You see, I hadn't told your da before I married him that I was a witch, and I was scared that he would leave us if he discovered what we were. At first, your da thought that I was going through the sort of depression common to women who have just had a baby, and that it would soon pass. When I only became more moody and withdrawn, he kept asking me—gently—what was troubling me until I broke down and told him what we were. He was astonished, of course, lass, but he doesn't love either of us the less. Marriage is forever for him, and he would never abandon us."

Closing my eyes, I tried to block out my mother's voice, because I didn't want to hear her confession. I already knew it wasn't a lie. I could remember crying in the dark, cold cellar lit only by a candle with her rocking me in her arms. I could remember my nose tingling and my throat tickling in the dusty attic as Mam sung me a lullaby. I could remember knocks on the door and shouting through the cracks, which had to be Da begging Mam to come out of hiding with me. I could remember sobs, which had to be Mam admitting everything to Da. I didn't want to hear that, after the screams and sobs, they had still loved each other the same, because that couldn't be true. They couldn't have still loved each other the same after Da had discovered that Mam had been lying to him about who she was all along. He couldn't go on loving someone if the person he had fallen in love with was a lie. I couldn't even love Mam the same way now that I knew she was a witch, and she hadn't told me who she was or who I was.

"Your da doesn't care that we're witches, Minerva." Mam squeezed my thigh, and I opened my eyes, but didn't look at her. I wasn't ready to meet the gaze of the woman who had lied to me all my life. Maybe this was how Jesus felt when Mary told him that his father wasn't a carpenter, after all, I thought numbly. "Not everyone is so accepting, though. In this town, people expect their minister to be almost as perfect as Jesus Christ. Your da can't stop being a minister when he leaves the churchyard. He has to be one all the time, and he is supposed to have a virtuous family with a charitable, industrious wife, and obedient, good-natured children. If his family isn't seen as an ideal one by the community, people will ask how he can guide an entire congregation on the path to righteousness if he can't even lead his own family down the road to heaven. If you or I show any sort of magic in public, we will be called unnatural and possibly evil. That would destroy your da's career, lass. Please think about that, and try to control your magic."

"So, you want me to keep my magic a secret, Mam?" I asked flatly, staring at the countertop. Thanks to my mother's story, I knew all about secrets now. I knew that you could keep them for years, and that they had the power to hurt or destroy relationships. More than that, I realized that told secrets could be a dagger that slew you in the eyes of the community, and that untold secrets could be a poison that murdered your entire family, but sometimes, I supposed, you just had to clutch a secret to your heart, praying that nobody in your family drank from the lethal vial and no one in your community picked up the knife.

"Exactly, dear," said my mother, and I could hear the eagerness in her tone, which allowed me to imagine that she was nodding energetically, even as I continued to scrutinize the counter. "That's precisely what I want you to do, my clever little girl."

"My lips are sealed, and I threw out the key, Mam." The childish vow that I made when Darla didn't want me to tell her mother that she had stolen a pinch of sugar or Priscilla didn't want me to tell Mrs. Boyd who had taken a nice fabric out of the sewing basket had never felt heavier on my lips than it did then. Finally glancing up at my mother between my pair of braids, I said, "Don't worry. Nobody could have heard anything that went on in the garden. Mrs. Boyd was singing loudly enough to shatter the church windows at choir practice."

"Be nice," Mam chided, sounding more amused than angry. Dumping a basket into my now cleaned hands, she added, "Run along to the creek now, and pick some blackberries. I want to make your da's favorite pie for dessert tonight."

"Yes, Mam." I pushed myself off the counter, tucked the basket under my arm, and hurried out the kitchen door. Wanting to run so that I wouldn't have to think about what my mother had just told me, I dashed down the red dirt road to the creek, ignoring the cuts on my knees that protested with every stride.

All too soon, I reached the creek. Since I wished for nothing more than to be alone with my churning thoughts, I was aggravated when I saw a boy with copper-gold hair sprawled along the bank, a puppy dozing on his chest, tossing pebbles into the water and popping handfuls of fruit from the blackberry tree growing by the creek into his mouth.

"Hello," he greeted me, as I settled myself on a rock, making certain that my skirt touched neither water not dirt and began picking berries. "You're the minister's girl, aren't you?"

"My name's Minerva," I answered irritably, noting with disgust that his lips and cheeks were smeared with juice. "My name isn't 'minister's girl.'"

"Guess not." The boy threw another pebble into the creek, and ripples spread out across the water, looking like wrinkles in un-ironed clothing. "My name is Dougal McGregor. Minerva is an odd name."

"It's nowhere near as odd as Dougal," I retorted, lifting my nose in the air.

"I won't blame you for your parents' bad taste if you won't blame me for my parent's bad taste." Dougal laughed and pet his puppy, stroking sticky juice into its fur. "Why have you been sent out to pick berries?"

"Because I'm a freak," I replied, not wanting to lie to this friendly boy who looked like he didn't know what a fib was, but grinning in a way that suggested I was joking even though, like my mother, I had never been more serious in my life.

"We're cuckoo birds of a feather, then." Smirking as he munched on still more berries, Dougal threw another stone into the stream. "I'm here because I punched my brother in the mouth for calling me a freak. Can't say I'm too sad. This is the most fun punishment I've ever had."

"Beats a spanking?" I suggested, unable to resist in indulging in a pun that would permit me to join in his fun.

"Eats away at being sent to bed without supper, too," Dougal said, his tone and brown eyes radiating satisfaction.

"Nice talking to you." Finished picking berries, I rose from the rock and gathered up my basket. As I climbed out of the bank and started down the lane, I called over my shoulder, "See you on Sunday."

When I returned home, I gave my mother the blackberries I had gathered, and she, as promised, made blackberry pie for dessert. Mam's blackberry pie wasn't just Da's favorite dessert, but also mine. Yet, I found that every bite seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth like wet sand and tasted about as delicious. I didn't want to look at my father now that I knew I was a witch. I felt guilty because I knew I would have to live a lie for the rest of my time in Caithness, and lying, I understood from Da's sermons, was a sin. I felt even worse that my father, an upright and honest man, would have to lie about who I was. I was also outraged at my mother for not telling either of us sooner what she was and who I was. I had only known that I was a witch for a few hours, but so far, the realization had only brought me pain, guilt, and anger, so I decided that I hated myself for being a witch and my mother for making me one.

After supper, when I had cleared off the table and Mam was washing the dishes, Da called me over to his armchair beside the parlor fireplace. "My little lass is very quiet today," he commented, scooping me up and sitting me on his lap. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine, Da," I responded, taking an unnatural interest in my toes to avoid meeting his chestnut eyes.

"Ah, and where did all those scratches come from?" he pressed, obviously noticing the cuts on my hands and knees.

"Carmel, Da," I told him.

"You're as talkative as stone today, Minerva." Da tapped my nose with a finger while his other hand fiddled with the radio dial. "Let's listen to some news, shall we? At least I know that the newsman will always be very vocal."

For a moment, as Da searched for a channel, static filled the parlor. Then, when he found his usual station, a man's voice replaced the static, blaring out the day's events in places I had never heard accompanied by opinions that I could not comprehend. I was letting the nonsensical words wash over me like a wave when my father grunted, "Hitler will have all of Europe at war or under his power yet. Invading Poland. That will have us and France at war with Germany before the week is out, or I'll eat my hat."

"Who's Hitler?" Suddenly not afraid to meet Da's eyes, I turned to frown out him.

"A monster who rules in Germany instead of under a bed," Da explained dryly.

"Oh." I considered this for a minute, and then said, "War is the game the little boys play in the fields, isn't it?"

"The war Hitler wants is for big boys and men." My father sighed. "Real guns are fired, and many of the boys and men involved don't make it home again."

"That's more than enough." Mam, drying her hands on her apron, bustled in from the kitchen, and glowered at Da. Then, deciding to make and declare my wishes for me, she admonished, "Minerva isn't ready to hear about war now, Robert."

"Ready or not, she'll hear about it sooner or later." Da shrugged, addressing my mother as if I wasn't there. "She lives in a world bent on blowing itself to smithereens even after the war that was supposed to end all wars."

"She'll hear about war later—much later." Finally choosing to acknowledge me, Mam said pointedly, "Speaking of later, it's getting late for little girls to be out of bed. Time to go to sleep, Minerva."


End file.
